Nervous about first booking - guest has no reviews

[Peter770]

Hi people,

I'm new to airbnb and I just had my first booking request for a couple to stay all of next week.

I am nervous anyway as I love my flat and this is the first time I have done this. 

However, I think I would be ok with it if I could see that the person had been positively reviewed before.

Unfortunately they have got no reviews at all even though they have been a memeber since 2016.

Just wandered what people's thoughts were about this..?

Cheers!

[Mike1034]

@Peter770 Firstly, welcome to the hosts family!

Just do your best in the preparation of your place to welcome your first guest. As a first time Airbnb guests, they may not have experience either. You may need to communicate with them well before check in, during their stay, and check out. In addition, you may explain to them how Airbnb review system works. Any ratings not five are bad. 

Since you just get started, I would suggest that you accept more short term stays like 2-3 nights. It helps to get a large number of reviews quicker.

[Ava30]

You could send them a message asking them why they don’t have any reviews even though they’ve been a member since 2016. I had a guest inquiry once like that and it turned out that they used his wife’s profile But this one time he wasn’t traveling with her so he was using his own. Then he proceeded to ask me to book off platform on platform so I declined them.  You can also send a message something like this when they have no reviews and have not filled out their profile:

”Thank you so much for your interest in staying at my place. Before I confirm your request, can you please tell me a little about yourselves and what brings you to ________? Because your profile is blank and you don’t have any reviews, there is not much info for me to get a sense of who you are. This is so important when booking a home vs a hotel/motel. Thank you again!”

[Vu19]

Personally, I have had quite a few guests with no reviews staying at my apartment before and havent experienced any issues so far. You could think i was taking a risk there but majority of of Airbnb guests have been great to me so you shouldnt be too concerned. One thing you could do is that once they've confirmed their booking you can just send them a welcome text and ask, for example, if they need airport pick-up or what time they might arrive. You can probably tell if they're nice people from how they responded to you but i wouldnt be worried too much if i were you.

Hope it helps

Vu from Vietnam